France and many countries in Europe have issues with immigrants. Most are from current or former colonies. The new citizens have learned the language and made efforts to be part of their adopted countries, but due to old colonial classism, the hosts really don’t want them and this causes them to be segregated. These new people are not treated as equal. They may have the same rights by law, but like we saw in the US South for 100 years after the slaves were freed, they aren’t treated as equal.
Tag: church and state
God didn’t put a man on the moon or wipe out a majority of the world’s diseases. Science did. Praying didn’t increase crop yields which allows us to raise much more food than we really need on low amount of acreage. Science did. Going to church isn’t going to help us find a cure for AIDS. Science will.
The recent defense of Evolution in Dover wasn’t some conspiracy of secular humanists bent on corrupting “our children” but was conducted by believers who find the truth of science to be much more important than their religious beliefs.
Well it had to happen. As the trial in the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District comes to a close this week, the defendants are doing everything they can to save themselves from losing the case. This includes changing their testimony, selective memory, and the ever useful – attacking the media. The plaintiffs in the case also questioned the school board on their hiring of the Thomas More Law Center to represent them. The center states as one of their missions: Defending and promoting the religious freedom of Christians.
I offer two short items I came across on the Internet yesterday. One is a positive item and the other is an example of the issue facing this country. Posted on the Charlotte Observer website on 10/31 in the op/ed section was a book review and commentary on “The Godless Constitution” by Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore and a letter to the editor of The Clarion-Ledger in Mississippi, on 10/31, takes “Secularists” to task for mixing microevolution and macroevolution.
Friday night I was surfing TV and came across the end of a special program on NBC hosted by Tom Brokaw called “In God they trust: NBC’s Tom Brokaw goes inside the world of Christian Evangelicals”.
Even though I missed most of the show they do have a transcript of the show on MSNBC.
In the discussion that followed the film and continued on our member’s e-mail list, it was suggested that Flemming and many non-believers go too far in “attacking” people with religious beliefs. It was said that we need to acknowledge that religion plays an important role in most believers lives and by “attacking” their beliefs we have crossed the line of decency.
As expected the charge was made that we non-believers who “attack” religious beliefs are hostile to religion and the religious and how this hostility undermines our credibility as a group to better the human condition. The assumption is made that we must not question people’s deeply held beliefs lest we hurt their feelings.